North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

Meeting at the usual place, The Shakespeare Hotel, 200 Devonshire Street, Surry Hills, at 7.00pm on Thursday December 4, we will be discussing North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell.

North and South was first published in 1854–55 as a serial in Household Words, a magazine edited by Charles Dickens.

Margaret Hale is a young woman who moves with her family from the comfortable rural south of England to the industrial north. Margaret is confronted by factory life: the poverty, child labour, strikes and class conflict. The novel blends social critique with personal drama, making it a moving love story and a vivid portrait of industrial Britain.

The format is that we talk about the novel in a fairly focused way for about 50 mins. Then the meeting is formally closed and people can stay back to continue the discussion about this book or anything else.

The novel can be found as a pdf or as a Kindle compatible file at https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4276 Easily available in hard form from local libraries. A 3-hour radio dramatisation can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJiO2XHGnU8

We meet in one of the semi-private rooms upstairs. Ask at the bar if you can't find us.

A $5 donation is requested to cover the costs of advertising on MeetUp. First-timers and those of limited means can skip the donation: I am not keeping tabs on who donates.